U.S.!

By Chris Bachelder

BLOOMSBURY; 305 PAGES; $14.95 PAPERBACK

In the October 2004 edition of the Believer, Chris Bachelder wrote that he had found himself in the "cul-de-sac of satire." His essay -- a series of hilariously astute observations masquerading as footnotes to a study of famed muckraker Upton Sinclair's preferred punctuation -- went a long way toward defining the deficiencies of American satirical fiction today. It also managed to milk relevance, symbolism, humor and humility from Sinclair's use of 1,539 exclamation points in a single novel. It was a tour de force, an impressive resurrection of a long-forgotten polemic titled "Oil!"

In fact, Bachelder was only getting warmed up. In "U.S.!" the author resuscitates the prolific scribe of the Left to examine the fault lines of class war and justice in America today. He finds that there aren't any. "Are we Socialist yet?" asks the serial-resurrected Sinclair some hours after he has been pulled from the grave yet again. "Are we metric?" That a Wal-Mart-dominated nation is as far from the former outcome as the latter is a given; that leftists continue to rally behind the hunted and hapless Sinclair is the book's conceit.

"U.S.!" is less a novel than a bag of tricks. It chronicles the waning spirit of political engagement in fiction and the rise of ambivalence and cynicism. The first half of the book is an inventive collection of Sinclair ephemera, a "Resurrection Scrapbook" that includes a review of his latest polemic, "Pharmaceutical!," the transcripts of a Sinclair-sighting hot line, a synopsis of a video game proposal in which the player would unearth other famed leftist activists, the floor plan for the Museum of Upton Sinclair (which includes a Stalin kiosk and a Texaco mezzanine) and a series of haiku about Sinclair, ostensibly culled from a Web site. All of these elements are masterfully conceived, full of inside and outside jokes. "Resurrection Scrapbook," if it fails to coalesce as a story, is at least evidence that the cul-de-sac Bachelder stands in is very fertile indeed.

But to take Bachelder at his own word, as expressed in the Believer essay, the primary goal for "U.S.!" is that it add up to something more than a "Novel of Wry Gags ... just as superficial, tendentious, and programmatic as a Sinclair novel." Bachelder has acknowledged that his brand of writing is "no doubt funnier than the muckrakers ... more laid-back and resigned to global capitalism ... less politically astute and more comically and culturally astute." But he's questioned the purpose of ambivalent humor. In an era when satire is increasingly encroached upon by reality and politics as a literary subject is relegated to nonfiction screeds, Bachelder has called for a revival of fiction with Conviction (and he did capitalize the C). It was time, he asserted in his 2004 essay, to "advance the political novel."

It is in the second half of "U.S.!" that Bachelder leaves his experiments with nonformula to offer up a true novella, "The Greenville Anti-Socialist League Fourth of July Book Burning." Here Sinclair and his posse of assistants, assassins, biographers and dumb-as-logs detractors all come together in a small Southern town, the scene of multiple misunderstandings. Changes of heart and pyrotechnics ensue. The story is laced with the same clever lampooning as the first half of the book (freelance assassins jockey for position on the roof of the local bank and complain about the lack of health benefits), but it also shows traces of sincerity and sympathy. It rues the death of the political left, slain by the smug hand of liberal cynicism. It celebrates the real life of Sinclair, ever the leftist and never a liberal. It teases out a fictional life with a dubious legacy.

Plenty of historical figures have been co-opted in the creation of good modern parables: Einstein is forever being inserted into anachronistic fiction, and Kafka will never know literary privacy. Sinclair is a dark horse candidate for inspiration, which is precisely Bachelder's complaint. In today's post-Sept. 11 cultural hash, what we need is a paragon of earnestness, an investigative storyteller. Now, more than ever, it seems that Bachelder wants to exclaim, is the time for Upton Sinclair!

Indeed, this year marks the centennial of Sinclair's most famous novel, "The Jungle." Two new biographies are scheduled for publication. But if the famous muckraker does get another day in the sun, the real credit may have to go to Daniel Day-Lewis. Just weeks before Bachelder's book hit the shelves came details of a planned film adaptation of "Oil!," starring the Academy Award winner as a swaggering oil tycoon.

Said Bachelder about the film deal, "I'm five seconds ahead of American pop culture."